


Where Shadow Lies on Frozen Hills

by AdmirableMonster (Mertiya), Mertiya



Series: Ring-bound verse [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate history interpretation, Alternate interpretations, But he loves his little flame, But it's there, Free Will, Grumpy Melkor, M/M, Mairon gets shit done, Melkor is a drama queen, Origin Story, the angbang is pretty implicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23618332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/AdmirableMonster, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: In the days when Arda lies in darkness, a group of elves take their fates into their own hands and seek out Melkor in Utumno.  A companion piece to Ring-bound, but both stand alone.
Relationships: Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron | Mairon
Series: Ring-bound verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848271
Comments: 21
Kudos: 102
Collections: stories of our own: works featuring nonbinary and trans characters





	Where Shadow Lies on Frozen Hills

It was in the first days after the Children of Ilúvatar had come to Arda that the elf Naicelea was born, beneath the dim far-off starlight of Varda’s stars. In those days, there was no other light, for the lamps of Arda long lay shattered and destroyed, and the Valar had departed for the West, all save Melkor, who was known only as the dark king in the North.

It was into a blighted land that the elves came, faded from the warring of the Valar. With no light but the shadowy, distant stars, plants grew only sickly or did not grow at all. Little food there was to grow and littler still to hunt: monsters roamed the plains that were too powerful for elves to kill, or too poisonous to eat. Naicelea, as they grew, soon saw that their people were slowly starving.

Food grew scarcer and scarcer until it was clear that something would have to be done. Many elves had cried to the Ainur but received no response. Some claimed that Oromë the Hunter would save them, but others regarded him with suspicion; Naicelea did not know. He appeared too infrequently to beg a boon of. Perhaps he was kind enough, if spoken to, but they did not see how he would be of help. So they said to their people, “I am going to beg a boon of the king in the north.”

There was a great outcry. Many feared the king, for all knew that Melkor was the reason that their land was fruitless and that monsters roamed the hills. It was an unshakeable fact passed down from the first moment they had set foot in Arda, as was the fact he was a being of pure evil, whose only desire was to destroy and destroy and destroy until nothing remained. This was pointed out to Naicelea by several different family members, at great length, and they retorted, “None of the gods who created us or who we revere have helped us, so we might as well stop cringing over old stories and try the evil one. We can hardly be worse off.”

This point raised a great deal of commotion, but a good portion of the younger elves did not disagree and in the end they set out, Naicelea at their head, to travel to the dread fortress of Utumno, icy and remote. It was a long journey and a perilous one; many nearly died or starved to death, but in the end they came to the Iron Mountains, and to a tall, cold fortress that seemed to have grown out of the rocks themselves.

Then many were afraid and would have turned back but Naicelea strode forward and said, “We have come this far; it cannot be more dangerous than what we have seen already.” Their stoutness of heart shamed the others, and in the end the entire band climbed up the mountain and stood trembling before Utumno. There was but one slim icy bridge that led to its entrance and this was guarded by a fearsome creature of flame, twice as high or more than an elf, with a great whip in its hand. It spoke in a crackling tongue, “Who dares approach Melkor’s Keep?”

Naicelea trembled but stepped forward and went to one knee. “We come to beg a boon of Melkor, the king in the north!” they cried.

This seemed to surprise the creature somewhat. Although it continued to threaten them, it seemed unsure, but after a moment it said, “Begone, children of Ilúvatar, ere I destroy you.”

Then Naicelea’s heart fell, for it seemed here there was no succor either, but they tried once more. “Please,” they said, with head bowed, although all about them their comrades had begun to flee in terror. “We go hungry and cannot defend ourselves in these lands. If we could treat with the king in the north—swear allegiance to him, perhaps—I am sure we could repay him. Our fealty cannot be worthless, moreso if there is a way for us to flourish in these lands and give unto him what we sow.”

The creature roared and raised its whip, and Naicelea did not flinch but only bowed their head. Then, before the whip could be brought down, a silken voice spoke and said, “Gothmog. Is this a way to treat honored guests?”

Naicelea saw fear in the being’s eyes; it turned and bowed its head. “I was told to let no one pass, my lord.”

“Which is, I suppose, what Lord Melkor instructed?” The being who stood behind him was the fairest that Naicelea had ever beheld, a slight form with pointed ears like an elf’s and shimmering crimson hair that fell about him like a cloak.

“Yes, my lord Mairon.”

The creature sighed and the sigh seemed to fill the world with sorrow and disappointment. “We will welcome these folk in, and Lord Melkor will treat with them,” he said.

“He will?” responded Gothmog. “Mairon, are you certain this is wise?”

Mairon’s eyes flashed with fire and he seemed to grow greater, a towering being of whirling flame and terrifying beauty. For an instant, Naicelea believed he would strike the other creature from the bridge, but he did not; he only sighed and shook his head. “I believe that Lord Melkor will see the wisdom in this before the day is through, and if he does not, it will be my head that answers for it, not yours.”

“Very well,” said Gothmog, and he stepped aside to let Naicelea and their people enter the fortress of Utumno.

It was a cold and empty fortress, but there was strength and beauty in its construction. Naicelea and their folk were awed by the sheer size and weight but equally by the touches of delicacy—here and there the strong angled lines were offset by doors or grates of fluted iron with soft little curls and even floral patterns. At one, Naicelea paused and stared, and the lord Mairon who had welcomed them stopped as well.

“Do you like that?” he asked. They nodded, and he smiled, seeming to brighten the room with it. “I made that. Melkor rarely thinks of decoration, particularly in these dark times.”

He took Naicelea and their folk to a little room, where he gave them food and wine—more than they had seen in long years—and then he returned and bade them all follow him, for the lord Melkor awaited.

The lord Melkor lounged on a throne of blue ice; he was more wondrous fair even than Mairon. Cold were his eyes, like chips of frost; cold was his smile; pale and cold his skin. “What are these that you bring me, Lieutenant?” he demanded.

Naicelea once again went to their knee before the throne. “My lord, my name is Naicelea, and I have come to beg a boon from you.”

“Why have you not killed them yet?” Melkor asked silkily. “Why have you let these children of _Ilúvatar_ trespass upon the grounds of my fortress, Mairon?”

Mairon, too, knelt to his lord. “They wish to pledge their fealty to _you_ , lord,” he replied.

“I have no time for the whims of the children of Ilúvatar. How dare you disobey my direct orders, Lieutenant?” He leaned forward and fisted a hank of red-gold hair in one hand. “You presume too much.”

Naicelea faltered at the sound of his voice, but Mairon did not. He lifted his chin and glared back. “Long years has it been since we came to Arda, lord,” he replied. “You smashed the lamps that would have given these lands life—”

“I will not abide the creations of those who robbed me of that art!” Melkor’s voice rose like howling wind.

“You have done naught but smash and scream since we arrived,” Mairon retorted, and there was anger in his voice, but something else as well. Thus had Naicelea heard their father Fealasso speak to their mother Nuhuinie. His voice gentled as he continued. “It was a precious thing that was taken from you, my lord, the ability to breathe life into a creation. It is no wonder that you are in pain. But you cannot live in dark isolation and brood for all eternity.”

“And who are you to dare to speak to me thus?” demanded Melkor. The hank of hair that he held he pulled on, dragging the other up to him until they were almost nose to nose. His anger was very terrible, and Naicelea trembled, but the lord Mairon once again did not.

“I am your lieutenant, the one you chose and raised up at your side. I am free to voice my own thoughts and these thoughts I have slept upon for too long, letting you waste yourself in an icy fortress when there is an entire world to be lived in, my lord!” As Melkor growled, he continued, “Or would you have it such that there is no disobedience in Utumno, just as there was to be no disobedience before Ilúvatar?”

Melkor’s eyes flashed, but he slumped back into the throne. “Fine. Speak your piece. You.” He pointed once again to Naicelea.

“My—my people and I would beg to swear fealty to you, lord,” Naicelea said, though they could not entirely stop the trembling of their voice. “We beg that you grant us a boon so that we may live in these desolate lands—the crops wither and die and we are not strong enough to hunt most of the creatures for meat, so we slowly starve.”

At this point, Mairon seemed to mutter something under his breath, and Melkor spat back an irritable rejoinder. Then Mairon spoke again, “My lord, Ilúvatar robbed you of your most precious talent indeed, but these creatures live and breathe already. You could lay your will upon them and gift them with greater strength. Remold them, if you cannot make something from whole cloth. As you did with the mushrooms—and I know how you delight in those.”

Melkor seemed almost to squirm under the weight of Mairon’s regard, and when he spoke, it was with a gentle tone the elves thought never to hear from one such as he. “And will this make you happy, little flame?”

“Aye, my lord,” said Mairon, and he bowed his fiery head.

“So be it,” said Lord Melkor, and he looked at Naicelea and their folk. “Would you and your folk willingly consent to become different than that you are? I will not mold an unwilling clay; I would not change your nature without that, for I am _not_ Ilúvatar.”

“This change will make us better able to survive?”

“I think so, but it will be very painful, and you will not be that which you are now any longer.”

Naicelea turned to their folk and each one they asked, whether they would swear their fealty or whether they would leave now. Of those who traveled with them, more than half elected to remain; the others were taken from Utumno and set back again upon the road down which they had come, and they travel out of our histories for a long time.

Thus it was that Melkor labored, always with his lord Mairon at his side, to change the folk of Naicelea to something stronger and hardier. It is true they lost their beauty—at least that which the elvish folk and sometimes Men call beauty—but they gained strength and hardiness and great surety. And they became a new people born in the dim twilight of Arda, before even Aulë awoke his dwarves, it is said. Ever after, even when the madness of the Silmarils came upon Melkor and he became that which the Valar already held him to be, even when he was cast into the Void and his lover Mairon dashed himself to pieces upon the rocks of his loneliness, ever crying for his lost love, we, the people of Naicelea, were faithful and did not forget our fealty.

But these words will mean little if they are not passed on and so I write this story down, for my children and my children’s children, to know that we are a chosen people and not a broken, twisted, empty mockery, as Men would have it. We chose and are chosen and for that we will not forsake our bonds.

\-- Ghâshbúrz, Orcish Scholar of the Fourth Age

**Author's Note:**

> also if you don't think Mairon and Melkor totally went and had gratuitous probably very rough sex after this scene, well
> 
> you'd be wrong
> 
> i should write that at some point


End file.
